Mage Among Superheroes

Just by looking at this set of portal powers, I could guess what sort of powers some of them had unlocked, but it would truly be just a guess. I’d have to actually test people to see what sort of ways they used mana, especially things they hadn’t already figured out themselves. We had a few clearly more fit individuals, which probably led them more towards martial pursuits. Then we had a couple scrawny fellows, who I presumed likely fit with spellcasting.

The Brigade already had a list of what they had demonstrated they could do, but I didn’t want to bias myself so I hadn’t looked yet. But I would if I needed to.

“Alright,” I said. “I know all of you have been training fitness with Meztli, so if you didn’t have one before you’re building up a decent foundation. But to see what you can do, I want to push you past your limits if possible. I think I’d like to break you into two groups. Then we’re going to run, and your goal is to catch me. I’ll be using magic, so it shouldn’t be something you can easily accomplish. Midnight will be observing from the sidelines.” I looked them over. “I know you’re unfamiliar with your powers, so I’ll add one safety feature. If you feel inclined to use some sort of power that would affect something beyond yourself, aim away from people, especially your fellow trainees. We don’t want anyone to get hurt if you instinctively imagine a fireball as a good way to slow someone down.”

“What if nothing happens?” asked a sturdy looking woman. She probably had a name, but I didn’t remember it. They would be getting monikers later anyway, so it was better to not be in the habit of calling them something they might want to keep secret.

“If nothing happens, we get exercise and move on to the next thing. I wouldn’t expect all of you to respond to this sort of stimulus.” I looked them over. “You three are the first group,” I said, pointing to a pretty boy, a short guy with darker skin, and the woman who had just spoken up. “Try to picture something in your mind. It doesn’t have to be clear, but a goal will help.” I spoke as if I had great experience, even though the normal way to unlock abilities from my perspective was through points. But I did have the experiences of a handful of people to go off of for the whole learning thing.

As we needed to be able to see everyone even if people got left a little bit behind, we were in one of the training rooms rather than the normal exercise areas. It would probably be a bit more uncomfortable, but the intent wasn’t to do it for a long time.

“Alright, remember, try to keep up or pass me or other members of the group.” I cast Enhance to bolster my physical abilities, then took off. With magic, I began a quick jog which should keep me ahead of anyone trying to sprint. And if anyone did get close, I could speed up.

Since I was running ahead, I couldn’t exactly see the others, but I could hear their footfalls and I would be able to sense if they did magic. Almost immediately, the shorter guy began to fall behind. Meanwhile, the sturdy woman seemed to be keeping up best. The pretty boy was fit and had a longer stride, so he was somewhere in the middle.

That wasn’t good enough. I sped up slightly as the woman strained to catch me. No matter how good of shape she was in before and how much she’d been training with the Power Brigade, it was unlikely she could keep up with myself without enhancements. She sure tried, though.

Then I felt a flow of magic from the back while hearing shoes suddenly hitting harder and faster. It took a bit, but soon the short guy was actually gaining. I could feel the constant output of mana, and when I saw him huffing and puffing past me I had an idea of what class he’d gotten. I could say for sure that he wasn’t using a spell.

Being passed seemed to spark something within the sturdy woman, and I shortly thereafter felt a flow of magic from her. A familiar one, even. I turned my head as I felt the spell nearly form… and then she staggered over to the wall to catch herself. Well, yeah, that was going to happen when you cast a spell that took most or all of your mana. Actually, if she wasn’t level 5 yet it would be more mana than she had. If she wasn’t doing any activities that leveled her up, it was quite reasonable. Still, it was a good attempt at Enhance though she didn’t quite manage it.

The final guy waved as I looked back. “Yeah, I don’t think I’ve got anything for this?” he shrugged.

“Fair enough,” I said, slowing to a halt. “You can stop too!” I called after the short guy with dark brown skin. I didn’t think he heard me for a second, but he slowly came to a halt, resting his hands on his knees and breathing heavily as he bent over.

The other three were a tall woman who looked kind of similar to the short man, a skinny man with light skin and a facial structure that I thought put him in the wide category of ‘asian’, and someone with a teal mohawk and an impractical leather jacket. Francois was either going to be outraged or so delighted to make a functional version of that aesthetic if it got to the point they got a proper outfit.

“Alright, everyone ready?” I asked when I gathered the other three together. Two of them nodded, but the tall- by human standards- woman raised one arm up. It took a moment. “Yes?”

“Are you going to do that spell again?” she asked.

“No, it’s still active,” I said.

“Oh. Uh… could you?”

“Sure,” I said. “Think you can do it?” I said, letting it fade away. That wasn’t actually that surprising. A surprisingly wide variety of casters got access to at least some form of Enhance.

“I… maybe,” she shrugged.

“Well, you should certainly try,” I said. “Here it is again,” I said, casting the spell again.

She watched with focused attention, then I felt her gathering mana. A moment later, she began to topple forward. I stepped forward, but both of the others caught one of her shoulders. The woman just shook her head. “What happened?”

“Mana fatigue. Well, perhaps it should be split into two separate things. Either way… the spell seems a bit too much for you to handle at the moment.”

The woman frowned. “But Anielka did it while running…”

The sturdy woman laughed. “And I almost fell over too,” she replied.

“Yeah, I suppose that’s something I should have covered. If you try to do something you don’t have mana for, or something that uses too much of your total mana pool at once, you’ll pass out for a second. It’s not inherently dangerous, but if you hit your head…” I shrugged. “It’s not great. Anyway, a good baseline is you can’t use more than half of your mana pool on one thing.”

“That sounds like a lot,” the tall woman said.

“It depends on how much maximum mana you have, really,” I shrugged. “For people with early powers, it’s actually… just not a lot of either. You’ve expended a good portion of your mana and I got some useful information, so you should sit out of the run. Unless you just want to run, but don’t try to use mana.”

She nodded. “I think I’ll sit down.” She sat next to Midnight, watching from some artificial chairs the room had made- it was apparently easier for the room to transform than for them to track down where everyone brought random bits of furniture.

That left the skinny guy and mohawk, and as I ran along they both followed after fairly quickly. Pretty much immediately the skinny guy began using a sustained flow of mana, a relatively small amount but enough to let him keep pace with me. Meanwhile, Mohawk began to fall behind until she surged past me all at once.

It wasn’t a spell, but it was strange as it still came in a burst unlike most martial abilities I knew about. Which to be fair wasn’t as many of them as I probably should. My studies under Master Uvithar had covered other classes to some extent, but I hadn’t really spent as much time on that area as I should have. Especially if I knew how things were going to end up, though understandably that wasn’t something I could have predicted.

“Alright, Midnight and I are going to confer over here for a moment,” I said, hoisting him onto my shoulder and bringing him away. “So, we don’t really know about the fancy lad,” I said. “But we have some ideas for the others.”

“That’s Armin.”

“I’ll learn his mercenary name,” I said. “Nobody wants me blurting out real names.”

“Fair enough,” Midnight admitted.

“So, starting with the small guy… Barbarian. Unless there’s something else I don’t know about that steams up like that. It should be easy to reference his awakening.”

“Yeah, I think that fits,” Midnight nodded. I’d already shared with him what I knew, comparing it to fiction in this world. “And his sister?”

“Oh, they’re related?” I asked. “No wonder they look alike. She got all the tall genes, though.”

“Clearly,” Midnight nodded. “What about her?”

“Unfortunately it’s difficult to narrow down two of them because they can both mostly use Enhance,” I said. “But we can check for mage easily enough in either the offense or defense sections, as there are plenty of exclusive spells.”

“That leaves the last two.”

“Well, they’re both some martial oriented class, I think. The skinny guy got a pure speed boost, which is likely due to overall physique if I read the flow of mana right. It was quite modest but we can check how widely encompassing it is. As for Mohawk… I dunno, some weird class.”

“Really?” Midnight tilted his head. “You can’t think of anything other than something weird?”

I shrugged. “Well, yeah.”

“I’ll keep my guess to myself,” Midnight said. “Just so I don’t taint your future observations. But I don’t think it’s that uncommon from what I know.”

-----

We took an hour break to let people replenish their mana, because we didn’t need more people passing out. Especially if there wasn’t someone there to catch them.

“Alright,” I said after having the room set up some targets. They wouldn’t be super durable, but they didn’t need to be. “Our next test is magical offense. Some of you might already have ideas of things you can do, but I want you to all try to replicate my spells. You might find your class is different than you thought.”

I couldn’t rule out the possibility that they didn’t follow the rules, either, though from what I’d seen of other portal powers they would. Jerome fit solidly into mage, and even those not influenced by myself like Stargirl’s fanatics were fairly recognizable.

“This is a pretty simple one, Firebolt,” I said. “If you have the right class, you should be able to do it, but if not don’t worry. It just means you’re probably a different class. We’ll first try a couple low level spells, and then if you have discovered anything else you can show it off.” Midnight and I both shot a Firebolt in sequence, striking one of the targets. “Don’t worry about not hitting, as long as you direct whatever you’re doing in that direction.”

Everyone definitely tried in their own way, but without a proper spell to build towards most of them just gathered a small amount of mana which then fizzled out. Mohawk tried especially hard, but got nothing.

The only one to actually produce results was the wall woman, leaving the tough one looking kind of disappointed.

“Alright,” I said. “Now let’s try Shocking Grasp,” I said, walking forward towards the targets. “You’ll want something to let the power out into.” I cast the spell standing to the side so they could see the electricity on my hand go into the target.

Once again, the few I’d already tagged as martial types didn’t really have anything happen. The Tough woman was looking quite disappointed, but to me it was just obvious she wasn’t a mage. She almost cast a spell out of her league, so actually casting one of these should be easy if it was even possible. The tall one seems to be a mage, though, so that would at least make one person straightforward. As for the rest, I’d find out soon enough.